Saturday, January 18, 2014

Bill Filed to Stop Monument at Olustee

Saying Confederate descendants in North Florida have accommodated the differing perspectives of millions of people from all over the country and the world, Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, has drafted a bill aimed at blocking a request by the Sons of Union Veterans to place a monument to their Civil War dead inside the 3-acre Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park.

The New York Timeswrites that the Florida chapter of the group last year asked the state Parks Department for permission to place an obelisk to honor Union soldiers inside the park, which is about 45 miles west of Jacksonville. The park holds three monuments commemorating Confederate soldiers.

Baxley, the Republican chairman of the state House Judiciary Committee and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, has drafted a bill to require legislative approval to alter commemorative sites.

“The descendants of these families have moved over and moved over,” said Baxley of the Confederate side. “You have 20 million people from all corners of the earth and the country. We have all these different perspectives here, and these descendants have accommodated that. But I think that diversity and respecting people’s ancestors applies to everybody.”